The Nice Outfit is a powerhouse, paint peeling pop combo based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.Boasting a fab guitar duo in Terry Hackbarth and Paul J. Wall and a top rhythm section in Matt Fletcher and John Whythes, the Outfit is the sound of a tidal wave crashing into Brian Wilsons sandbox as if the summer would never end. Tough, good time garage mod, not afraid of doing a Monkees and a Magazine song in the same set. Brill Building as the Now Sound!
The Nice Outfit has been shaking things up in Milwaukee since the spring of 2002 with their wild, upbeat shows including an opening slot for Sixties British Invasion icons The Zombies as well as greasy pop outfit The Figgs.Road ready and kid-approved, The Outfit is driving to the gig with nitro in the tank. Check out their latest e.p., "Kissing Jocelyn" on Easter Records.
Check out what Lucid Culture had to say:
"While gentrification has pretty much nixed any potential for a new music scene created by young people here in New York, it hasn't kept a vital, exciting underground from springing up in Milwaukee. Which makes sense, if you look at the trend nationwide: good bands whose members might have gravitated to New York ten years ago are priced out of the market here and instead head for regional magnet cities like Santa Fe or Houston, doing probably just as well or even better there than they would here.
Case in point: the "Milwaukee pop underground" centered around Easter Records, a vibrant, collaborative network of musicians that, by comparison, makes the Broken Social Scene seem pretty kaput.The Nice Outfit is the best new band to spring from it to date. Their myspace says they sound "like the Kinks on a coke binge." Picturing a wizened little Ray Davies shoveling blow up his nose at this point in time is pretty funny, but the only funny thing about the Nice Outfit is that they aren't more popular than they've already become in their hometown.
Using tasty layers of both jangly Rickenbacker and scorching Fender guitar, their debut ep blasts a hole in your nose, woops, umm, anywhere you need a hole blasted. They're an escape hatch from a boring day.The first song, Kissing Jocelyn is a fast, deliriously sunny Rickenbacker-driven janglepop hit, sounding something like the Church crossed with New York's own Dog Show. Track two, This Time Next Year evokes nothing less than Washington, DC psychedelic punk legends the Slickee Boys, with its furious twin guitar attack, Terry Hackbarth and Paul Wall playing off each other with a serious chemical burn. The all-too-brief One Minute Forty-Five - "Summer's gone in one minute forty five," goes the chorus – is a scorching blast of garage punk with distant echoes of Aussie legends Radio Birdman. The ep concludes with He Don't Want You Now, which starts out as the most Kinks-ish of all the songs and builds to the best chorus of any of them.The band brings in a 60s artifact, a repeater box, the second time around. Nice touch. This album just makes you want to head to Milwaukee for Summerfest in June and never come back.
It's early in the year but this may well be the best debut of 2008. Five bratwursts." Several of the other Easter Records bands are worth checking out: garage rockers The White Hot Tizzies, janglemeisters Trolley (also featuring Hackbarth and Wall) and Heathrow, who sound like Supergrass if that band had been raised on Lienies and brats."